Television interview with Minister Butler, ABC Afternoon Briefing – 13 June 2025

PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Well, as we were just talking about there, the nations’ Health Ministers they met today in Melbourne and resolved to initiate a nationwide review into the regulation of the IVF sector. The Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler, came right from that meeting to the studio and I spoke to him a short time ago. Minister, welcome to the program.

MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING, MINISTER FOR DISABILITY AND THE NDIS: Thanks, Patricia.

KARVELAS: You've come fresh from the Health Ministers' meeting, what were the key decisions that were made?

BUTLER: No-one ever leaves the Health Minister's meeting fresh. If you're the Commonwealth Minister it’s -

KARVELAS: A bit brutal?

BUTLER: It was a pretty long and involved meeting, but we got a lot of work done. We spent a number of hours working with Mental Health Minister colleagues and also the sector itself. We heard some really powerful voices of people with lived experience of mental illness about ways in which they're just not getting the supports that they need or their family members need. We heard from carers as well. But we did a lot of other work in the health sector as well as Health Ministers.

KARVELAS: Okay, but on the mental health were there any tangible agreements going forward? Because the mental health sector has been in some crisis, Four Corners recently reported on some of those issues. What were the decisions made?

BUTLER: There were three main areas of focus. One is to build the mental health workforce. We made a number of commitments at the last election to do that, some in the, sort of, well recognised, well established clinical areas like psychology and psychiatry. But also building a peer workforce, which unique among health sectors really is really important in mental health. We also talked a lot about youth mental health that your viewers would know is a real challenge out in the community. Demand for mental health supports among young people just grows year on year on year.

And so making sure we have, not just the right models of care, but enough of those services available was something we talked about. Again, we made a very substantial commitment of about $700 million to expand mental health services for young Australians, including what Pat McGorry calls the missing middle.

The last area, perhaps the most complex area, was people who need really significant psychosocial support. They have severe, often lifelong, mental illness. They're not maybe qualifying for the NDIS; they're bumping in and out of hospital emergency departments, but just not getting enough support. We also heard from the Productivity Commission that is reviewing the State - Commonwealth agreements on mental health now about what we could do there, that is a focus of Commonwealth and state action going forward.

KARVELAS: Is there any financial contribution or decisions that have been made? Because, obviously, the split between the Commonwealth and the states is always contentious.

BUTLER: Not out of today, and I think the sector understands that we're really at the back end of an existing five-year agreement between Commonwealth and states. The Productivity Commission has been reviewing that agreement. We have to negotiate that again next year. But also involved in this area is the commitment to so-called foundational supports as part of a disability reform agenda. That’s not only going to look at kids under the age of nine with more mild to moderate developmental delay issues but, in the longer term, we'll look at this group who just aren't getting the psychosocial support that they need outside of the NDIS.

KARVELAS: Well on that, July 1 was meant to be the beginning of that process - that's not going to be ready for then. Is there a commitment out of today about when those supports will be ready for those young people who the NDIS isn't going to be supporting?

BUTLER: I’ve said when I came to this portfolio, this expanded portfolio, that the foundational supports commitment made by jurisdictions really coming out of National Cabinet, the Prime Minister and the premiers, our leaders, was tied to the hospital funding deal. Those deals won't be completed before the latter part of this year. There's no way we could roll out a foundational support system on 1 July given that really there's no funding agreement.

KARVELAS: What happens to those people in the interim?
 
BUTLER: Most of them are on the NDIS right now. Really what we were at was ways in the future of providing an alternative source of support for families with kids under the age of nine with more mild to moderate levels of developmental delay. Not kids who are really on a pathway to lifetime functional impairment that would qualify them for something like the NDIS, but kids who need a lower acuity level of support to nudge them back on course.

KARVELAS: And the other big issue that's obviously been on the agenda all week because of what's happened at Monash is in relation to IVF. Has there been an agreement about national regulations or a way of policing, if I can use that word, the IVF system, given it really is taking a hit in terms of public trust?

BUTLER: I'm really worried about public confidence in this system. My third child is an IVF baby, I know the level of trust that families place in this sector to deliver them what feels like at the time a miracle baby and we do about 20,000 of them every single year. This is a big part of our society and we've traditionally thought we've had the world's best system for good reason, but there is a bit of a lack of confidence right now that we, as Health Ministers, talked about today, the need to inject that confidence back into the system.

We want some advice from our officials about whether, in the future, we would have more national regulation, your viewers will remember. This really cropped out of state systems, which is where the first IVF babies were born. There are, essentially, eight systems of regulation across the country. It would take a little bit of time to move to more national regulation.

The thing that we were focused on today was delivering more independence and transparency around the accreditation of the providers. This is really, I think, a real confidence issue that they accredit themselves.

KARVELAS: So, will there be a change in terms of the accreditation?

BUTLER: There was a very strong view among ministers. Certainly, I have the view we need independent accreditation, not the providers effectively having their own accreditation system that monitors themselves. Independent accreditation, more transparency. For example, we know that, in the last full year, there were dozens of breaches of the code of conduct but I don't know, as the Federal Health Minister, what they were. They're not reported, they're not disclosed.

I think to get more confidence in what has been a terrific system that's transformed the lives of tens and tens of thousands of families who are able to start or grow their families, it just needs that injection of confidence. As a group of Health Ministers, we were committed to delivering that today.

KARVELAS: Okay. Antisemitism in hospitals was also an issue that I know some people were going to raise. Were there any developments there?

BUTLER: There is a lot of work that our workforce regulator, our health professions regulator, is doing generally about cultural safety and improving training and awareness about racism and discrimination in the system, a big review that's delivering better awareness and training of those issues. But I think there are some more exceptional issues to deal with around anti-Semitism. They came out of the Bankstown nurses incident, a real lack of confidence in some parts of the Australian Jewish community about whether they would be fairly treated in parts of the healthcare system.

We did have a good talk about that. We want to make sure that the work that APRA is doing more broadly around cultural safety also pays particular attention to the needs, some of which have really significant historical resonance for the Jewish community that those members of Australia have.

KARVELAS: Minister, just on a couple of other issues; I know you've been really, you've got your head entirely into this Health Ministers meeting but, of course, we have got the Israeli strikes on Iran and now, you know, Israel, basically, is poised and waiting for retaliation. Already we've got some condemnation of some of the actions. Of course, the US were trying to de-escalate it seemed, but Netanyahu has gone ahead. What are you worried about? Is the Government worried about a full-blown Middle East regional war now?

BUTLER: I'm only catching up with this. I know Minister Wong has already addressed this situation. But obviously we, as all governments around the world would be, are deeply alarmed at the further destabilisation of an already incredibly volatile region. Obviously, Iran's building capability around nuclear technology and ballistic missile technology is a threat to international security that we've been as concerned about as every other responsible member of the international community. But we want to resolve these issues through dialogue. That would be Australia's view. We're monitoring this closely but, obviously, it's a cause for very serious alarm.

KARVELAS: Antonio Guterres has put out a statement through his spokesman saying he was particularly concerned by Israel's attacks when talks between Iran and the United States were underway. Are you concerned that Israel has gone it alone? Obviously, they gave the United States some notice and they've been able to evacuate some people, but they were responsible for the attacks on their own.

BUTLER: Look, I am the Health Minister.

KARVELAS: Yes, you are.

BUTLER: We've been locked up for six hours in a Health Ministers’ meeting, so I’m really sort of catching up on a lot of this. I don’t want to add comment to it. I know, though, Minister Wong's already been out. She and other members of the Government will be monitoring this very, very closely.

KARVELAS: Does it though, change the optics as the Prime Minister is still trying to secure a meeting with Donald Trump for Monday?

BUTLER: Of course there's lots for us to talk about, for our Prime Minister to talk about with other leaders that he'll be meeting over the course of the next few days, including if there is the opportunity with the US President. These matters unfold pretty close to the time in terms of the schedule. But I know our Prime Minister will be out there, fully briefed, very keen to talk to a whole range of leaders he'll be meeting with.

KARVELAS: Yeah. Thank you so much for your time.

BUTLER: Thanks, Patricia.